extrude region (vertex normals) direction problem
If  your Pivot is set to 'Individual Origins', you can indeed get AltE > 'Faces Along Normals' in 2.8, or AltE > 'Region Along Vertex Normals' in 2.79, to fail as shown. 

With the Pivot set to any other value, it works as expected.

This does seem like, at least, inconsistent behavior.. I haven't looked to see whether it's already been mentioned to developers.